The Interior Design Excellence Awards [IDEA] winners and highly commended projects were announced last week at a ceremony held at Sydney’s Ivy in the Ivy Room, before moving on to Ivy Lounge for the glamorous after party.

The Interior Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) showcase the best of Australian design. First held in 2001, the prestigious awards program receives hundreds of submissions from across Australia each year and is recognised by the design community as the country’s pre-eminent design awards program.

IDEA promotes and rewards recent work in interior design and product design across 14different categories, as well as recognising emerging young talent and designers whose work demonstrates exemplary sustainable objectives.
Now in its ninth year, IDEA 2010 Interior Design Excellence Awards received a record number of 288 shortlisted projects across 14 different categories.

The Overall Winner was a joint venture between architects Woods Bagot and NH Architecture for the Hilton South Wharf in Melbourne.

HASSELL also won several awards for commercial categories including the Leo Burnett office in Sydney and the ANZ Centre in Melbourne.

The residential category saw architects BKH receive the Multi Residential award for Chippendale Apartment with Multiplicity winning the Single Residential category for Westwyck Unit 4, a modern eco-house.

The retail design winner was Dreamtime Australia Design’s Victor Churchill Fine Family Butcher and Museum Victoria won the new event design category for Wild: Amazing animals in a changing world, an interactive exhibition blending traditional displays with multimedia screens.

In the product categories, Koskela won for the Mika Table, while Ross Gardam of Spaceleft received the award for sustainable product for Ply High – a pine ply table with legs fabricated from cut-outs from the underside of the table top. The Goods Shed North by BVN Architecture was awarded in the second sustainability category, winning the sustainable project award.

The emerging designer award was presented to Sydney product designer Henry Pilcher, who also won Design Pitch at Corporate Culture on Tuesday night. This year’s Designer of the Year award was split into two categories for 2010 – the judges award, and the people’s choice award. Bates Smart designer Jeff Copolov was recognised by the jury, while Stuart Krelle and Rachel Luchetti of Luchetti Krelle won the people’s choice award.

An important new category introduced this year was the IDEA Gold Medal award. With nominees chosen by the jury, the shortlist acknowledged the work of a selection of high achievers in the world of Australian design. The winner of this year’s inaugural award was Sue Carr of Carr Design Group, chosen by the jury for her extraordinary body of work since the formation of Inarc in 1971.